


Event Horizon

by TheEquestrianidiot



Category: Gravity Falls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:59:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2795597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEquestrianidiot/pseuds/TheEquestrianidiot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2040, the most ambitious project of human race was initiated that carried an advanced ship to the borders of the solar system. It never returned. Seven years later, Earth sent a rescue mission after apparently receiving a signal from the lost ship near Neptune. Now, it's up to Dipper Pines to figure out where the ship went, what it's seen . . and what it's brought back with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

* * *

Dipper Pines opened his eyes and gazed upon a gray universe. Once more vented into pale reality without argument, vented into a mundane world that was, in its own dreary way, as bad as the world that lived in his dreams.

Lying on his bed, sheets rumpled around his slender body, he stared at the dimly seen ceiling of his studio apartment. This part of awakening had become ritualistic over the years. The ceiling was his icon, his mandala, so lacking in features that he had discovered that it helped him focus. Over the years the ceiling had helped him find his way to one idea after another. Many mornings had been spent lying awake, images and solutions tumbling through his overactive brain.

He turned his head, frowning as beads of sweat trickled into rivulets and found their way into the lines and crags of his face. His dreams took their toll on him, even when he failed to remember anything more than a sense of unease. Once awake he could push the unease, even the terror, to the back of his mind, burying it there beneath facts and figures.

He pushed himself up slightly, enough to reach the bedside light switch, flicking it with his thumb. The sudden brightness of the halogen light made him squint. The outlines of the apartment came into focus and he winced, trying to deny the sharp jab of pain that always came when he turned on the lights. The pain would pass; it always did.

Nothing had changed, nothing ever changed, nothing ever would. The rules of his physical world did not permit such things and would not permit him to turn back time. In his world there was no higher power than the laws of physics.

He pushed the sheet away and eased slowly from the bed, trying to stretch, ignoring the little signs of age in his back, his joints. Denial of the process of aging—more an act of ignoring the physical in favor of the cerebral—had led, for a time, to an obsession with the gradual degradation of his body. That had eventually petered out, leaving him only with periodic e-mails from the gym about renewing his membership and an occasional pseudo-concerned note from his homeopath.

He walked into the bathroom, habitually making a quarter-turn to go through the narrow doorway, not bothering to close the door. A quick leak in slow motion, then a quick body wash that sloughed away the traces of sweat along with any accumulated grime.

He set out his shaving kit, filling a shaving mug-with scalding water. He foamed his face carefully and picked up the pearl-handled straight razor, opening it out with a slow, careful movement, reflecting slivers of his lined face. He turned the razor slightly in his hands, saw the hard, cold reflection of his eyes.

Dismissing the image, he looked up into his mirror and applied the edge of the razor to his face, shaving in smooth, even strokes. This method of shaving was an anachronism, seen as an affectation, tolerated or ignored by those who knew of his proclivity. Once upon a time Dipper had preferred it; these days it was no more than habit. Shaving this way had been another enforcement of precision, another element in the plan shaping his life. As with so much else in that plan, it had assumed the air of reflex.

Drip. Startled by the sound, he lifted the razor away from his face, his breathing stilled for a moment. He clearly heard the sound of air whispering through the ventilator grill in the bathroom. Drip. He looked to one side of his reflection, focusing on the bathtub tucked into a corner of the tiny bathroom. Drip. Slowly, he turned around, staring.

He felt very cold, but knew that the temperature had not changed.

Water oozed from the faucet, coalescing into a large, ungainly bubble of water before giving way to the demands of gravity. Odd, he thought, that gravity demands so much of us that when we rest we fall asleep.

Drip.

He turned back to the mirror and resumed his shaving, slowly, precisely, and smoothly. He splashed water into his face, toweled himself dry, throwing the towel over the rack when he was done. The bathroom needed cleaning, he noted, but he could not be bothered to stoop to the chore often these days. He picked up his comb and swiped carelessly at his hair, pushing it back into place. He was a scientist, and no one really cared how a scientist looked.

_Just deliver the super-bomb, Doctor, and we'll overlook your breach of the dress code_.

From the bathroom to the closet, and a change of clothes, half-heartedly smoothing out wrinkles. Dressed, he went into the kitchenette, opened the tiny refrigerator, and stared helplessly into its disorganized interior. New forms of life were being generated in there, he was sure; in the meantime, the examination yielded only the usual archaeological data. One of these days he was going to have to put something fresh in there or arrange for a biohazard team to remove the fridge.

He opened a cabinet, extracted a box of instant oatmeal, added milk powder, water, salt, and too much sugar, irradiating the compound result in the microwave until it was suitably unappetizing and had developed a texture akin to wet, sweetened sawdust. Spooning a mouthful of this unwelcome body fuel into his mouth and chewing morosely, he went to the window. Another mouthful of too-sweet mush, then the last part of the morning ritual.

He reached out and opened the blinds that covered the window. The starscape blazed in at him, giving color to his gray world. The stars were the main attraction in this habitat section of Daylight Station—Earth lay below them, beneath the "south" side, and all that could be seen from his quarters was a cheerful glow at the bottom edge of the window, if you leaned forward in just the right way. Dipper never bothered to try and catch the glow, and he never really looked at the starscape, never had, his mind always being on something else. These days his mind was usually empty when he looked out this way, voided in dreams and nightmares. Even so, nothing came to him now, only the hard clarity of too many stars seen through vacuum.

He finished his oatmeal, retracing his steps to the kitchenette, putting the bowl into the dishwasher. Several others, crusted with varying amounts of decaying oatmeal, already occupied the top rack. He closed the machine carefully and poured himself a glass of tepid water.

The videophone buzzed angrily, startling him. He placed his glass on the kitchenette counter, and made his way around to the phone. He could barely remember the last call he had received—no one called him unless they needed something. Most of the people he knew or worked with tried to avoid needing anything from him. The only one who ever called was Mabel.

The videophone buzzed again. He tugged at his bottom lip, frowning at the blank-screened instrument. He scanned the nameplate as the third buzz began, waved his hand over the call pickup sensor.

"This is Pines," he said, and was surprised at how dusty and unused his voice sounded, and he squeezed his eyes shut. _Take a note, Dipper Pines: you need to socialize more._

A voice spoke quickly and softly on the end, "Dr. Pines, report to the Lewis and Clark, docking bay number four."

He opened his eyes, nodded coldly, and waved a hand over the call hang up sensor. It was time to get started. At least he would get to see his sister again.

* * *

The hull of the Lewis and Clark did a good job of reflecting the state of its crew. The ship was badly in need of a full overhaul, perhaps even a partial refit, after long-haul duty out in the Big Rock Range. Asteroid belt patrol duty offered little in the way of rewards and a great deal in the way of hazards and ship wear.

The Lewis and Clark was not a pretty ship. Her builders had essentially taken an enormous ion drive and built a spaceship around it, making a place for instrumentation and, grudgingly, for a small crew, a configuration that one British wag had proclaimed to her captain, Wendy Corduroy, as being "All arse and no fore'ead." A muscleship with armor that would make a cockroach cheer, she could stand up to almost anything short of a high-speed encounter with a big chunk of rock. She could easily deal with a no-maintenance turnaround and another run, this one taking them much further than the Big Rock Range.

Inside, she was no great comfort. Captain Corduroy, poised loosely in her con as she tried to remain relaxed, looked down on her demesne. Behind thick quartz windows in the nose, the bridge was a compacted nightmare of instruments on two horseshoe levels. Operator's chairs seemed to have been wedged into the best available positions that might still allow some movement, suggesting that the human component had been the last consideration here.

Two of those human components were packed too closely together at the front of the bridge. There was enough elbow room, but the feeling on these boats was that you had better maintain a friendship prayer on a long haul, or someone was surely going to get mauled, maimed, or murdered.

Tambry, a dark skinned, purple haired navigations expert, sat to the left, focused on her navigational readouts, running cool but intense. She was on this crew because Wendy had wanted her on this crew, and she knew she had enough clout somewhere to get away with demanding that she be assigned to the Lewis and Clark. Her hair was pulled back, pinned severely in place, giving her angular face the look of a professional ascetic.

Robbie V sat to her right, hunched over his console. Tambry glanced aside at the pilot, who was fluttering his hands over keypads, laying their course as he read it from her navigational feed to his console. A good pilot, Wendy thought, but a lousy diplomat.

Suddenly done with his work, Robbie straightened, rubbed at his face, and sat back abruptly, making his pilot's chair wobble gently on its gimbal mount.

He heaved a sigh.

Wendy, looking down, sympathized.

Robbie tilted his head back, looking up at the Captain's position. "I can't believe this bullshit. I haven't gotten more than my fuckin' hand in six weeks, and now this shit." Wendy saw Tambry purse her lips at Robbie's remark. He liked to needle the navigator. "Why not Mars, Captain? At least Mars has women. Neptune? There's nothing out there. If the shit goes down, we'll be on our own," Robbie said. The pilot had a look of deep concern. Wendy could not blame him for his feelings on the matter either. It was going to be goddamned lonely out there.

Wendy tapped a switch on the main operations panel of her chair and was swiveled around and lowered into the center of the bridge. She appreciated the visual effect of this setup, although she could not see it-for herself. She was not a small woman by far; she had stood at a whopping 6'0 ft even (having a lumberjack family really had its advantages), but she had chosen not to give in to the hints and coercion in high school, preferring instead to pour the contents of book after book into her brain. The net result of that was that she could not only strike terror into the hearts of those she wished to terrify, she knew enough in the way of psychology and strategy that she could have them running errands and doing she laundry. That, and the fear of her always angry father, Dan.

Coming down from the con had the effect of Zeus coming down from Olympus.

Wendy cultivated an intense, brooding look and a watchful air, the image of the dedicated warrior. She was not a particularly beautiful woman, but she kept and carried herself well.

As the chair locked in place, Wendy said, "You know the rules. We get the call, we go. Is the course locked in?"

"Locked and cocked," Robbie said. The pilot turned back to his station, his back tensing up. Does he ever relax? Wendy wondered. One of these days he was just going to explode on the spot.

Tambry glanced at her board, then back at Wendy. "We're past the outer marker. We can engage the ion drive whenever you're ready." Wendy liked Tambry's intelligence, but had never gone so far as to express that to her, for fear that she would take offense. The purple haired girl had never been particularly approachable.

Wendy turned her attention to the other stations in the lower section of the bridge. The boards for the ship's systems and mission stations were down there. Some folks referred to this part of the bridge as "the pit." Wendy had never approved of the term, and no one on her crew used it. Such terms tended to generate negative moods, and she wanted as few of those as she could get on long hauls. The crew instead referred to it as the "war room," a term she let slide.

"Mabel?"

Mabel, the ecstatic co-pilot, and brother to Dipper Pines looked up, eyes shining. "Everything green on my boards, Wendy."

She waved a hand over her instruments with a casual air that Wendy figured would be gone in another ten years. Mabel was fresh-faced still, despite the pallor that the media liked to call Spacer's Tan. At least Mabel had some excitement about this mission. And according to what Mabel had told her earlier, this would've the first time she had see her brother again in eight years. Everyone else was bitching about having to pull another long haul and going to Neptune. .

Neptune. Better be something awfully important out there.

Mabel was waiting, watching her with the eager intentness of a puppy. She took another look at her own boards, then turned back to her bridge crew. "Start the countdown."

There was a bustle of activity. Readouts on several monitors changed to show a digital clock.

Tambry said, "Ion drive will engage in"—a pause, while she waited for status lights to change on her boards— "T-minus ten minutes."

"Let's go." Wendy released her restraints and rose carefully from her chair. Below her, Mabel was rising from her seat, clearing a space. Wendy swung around onto the ladder that connected the two bridge sections, covering the distance in a fireman's slide. Robbie and Tambry followed her down, Robbie climbing in that stiff way of his, Tambry sliding down.

Wendy ducked and turned through the hatch from the war room, her crew following her through the ship, into the main airlock bay. By that time they could have found it by following the sound of something akin to music. There was a radio at the end of the tunnel, rather than a light, and it was jacked up to earbleed level, making the walls thrum in distressed sympathy with the beat. Along the walls of the bay was a row of extra-vehicular activity suits, stowed neatly, impervious to the pounding rhythm.

Wendy came through the hatch looking like angry thunder, her entourage behind her. Before she had even focused on the sole live occupant of the bay, she was snapping, "Shut it off!"

Lee, tall, with a tan, and long black hair, barely missed a beat, swinging around and stowing a freshly wrapped safety line in a storage locker. He high-stepped to another storage locker, hitting the power switch on the jambox that had been built into the top. _No wonder that damned thing was so loud_ , Wendy thought, as Lee fell in with the others; the jambox speakers were using half the ship as a resonant chamber.

"Time to play Spam in the can," Lee said, grinning ear-to-ear at his captain's back, his tone sarcastic.

Wendy did not waste her time looking back. "Don't start with me, Lee," she snapped, and smiled inwardly as she heard the tone of Lee's footfalls change. He had smartened up immediately, unconsciously adopting a military posture and gait. Wendy was glad she could count on her crew to maintain standards when necessary.

They continued onward to the crew quarters. Everything had been stowed for docking, bunks folded up, chairs and tables put away in their cubbies, the video units locked down, even the galley cleaned up and cleaned out. They had been restocked for this mission, but had not yet had time to get things into the usual state of a long-haul galley, a situation that was a relief to Wendy, who only tolerated the mess because it was particularly bad for morale to be thoroughly iron-handed. As long as they played the game according to the unwritten rules, cleaning up after themselves every couple of days, she was content to let things slide.

Soos, the large, friendly, technician was crouched down at floor level, an access panel pulled up and placed to one side of him while he worked, loading carbon dioxide scrubbers into the ventilation system backup. That had been part of the restocking situation too. When the orders had come down from On High, the maintenance crews had been redirected and all efforts aimed at a fast resupply.

"Captain Corduroy…"

Wendy turned her head at the sound of Dipper Pines's voice. The scientist was standing to one side of the crew quarters, looking as though he would prefer to be hiding in the head. Wendy glared at him, her jaw set.

Pines was not about to be cowed that easily. Staring back at Wendy, he tried again. "I just wanted to say—"

"The clock is running, Dr. Pines," Wendy said, ice and steel in her voice.

She took two steps toward Dipper, almost closing the distance, her body language as non-threatening as possible otherwise. Dipper tried to flinch back, but had nowhere to go. "If you'll follow the rest of the crew, they'll show you to the gravity tanks."

For a moment, it seemed as though Pines was going to insist on talking to Wendy, and never mind the consequences. Finally, he closed his mouth and swallowed hard. The rest of the crew had passed behind Wendy by this point, Lee stopping and half-turning in the hatchway that lead out toward Medical.

Wendy waited for the inevitable smart-ass comment from him, but it never came; instead, he gave Dipper an impatient look.

Pines sidled away from Wendy, then turned and followed Lee out of the crew quarters. Wendy stood for a moment, listening to the noises of her ship, the little creaks here and there, the hums, the high-frequency hissing of blank gray monitors. Space was supposed to be silent; spaceships never were.

Vibrations traveled from the hull plates, resonated through the ship, manifested as sound from the bulkhead.

Wendy turned back to Soos, looking down at him. "What's the holdup?"

"Just loading the last of the CO2 scrubbers, dude", he said, twisting his backwards hat towards the front of his head . He looked up at her, gave her a smile. Wendy relaxed a little.

Soos did not seem concerned about anything here, so she saw no reason to worry.

Soos finished his work and closed the access panel, securing it. He brushed his hands together and stood up, following Wendy out of the crew quarters and down to Medical.

Medical was a little more open and spacious than most areas of the ship, if only to allow the ship's doctor some elbowroom. Everything here was modular in format, allowing swift reconfiguration in an emergency. The walls were full of surprises: there was equipment here that major earth-side hospitals would go crazy to get. Gravity Couches, tall, broad tubes built for human occupancy, stood against the walls, anchored in the deck plates. Each of them had been opened and activated, waiting only to be filled.

Wendy looked around, and found Nate, the ship's doctor, over with Robbie, preparing the pilot for his time in the tank. Robbie gave Nate an angry look, to no avail. Nate swabbed Robbie's arm with an alcohol pad, then, in a flash, jabbed a hypodermic needle into the pilot's arm, pressing the plunger down a bit harder than required. Robbie shook Nate's hand off, turned, and climbed into one of the tanks, closing his eyes.

_Great bedside manner, Nate_ , Wendy thought. Nate turned, looked for a moment at Wendy, nodded, dropped the used hypodermic into a biohazard box, and went on to Lee. Lee, as usual, had dispensed with even the smallest display of modesty, standing before his gravity couch with only his sassy attitude and a pair of dog tags to keep him warm. Lee, grinning, offered his arm to Nat, who did no more than swab and impale.

To one side of him, Tambry kicked off her boots and started to shuck out of her flight suit, going to hang it up in a storage locker. Time was moving; the ion drive would not wait for Wendy. She pulled off his own boots and unzipped his suit, stripping down to her regulation undergarments.

Done with Lee, who went to let it all hang out in his Gravity Couch, Nate moved over to Mabel, frowning for a moment at the silver pentacle hanging around Mabel's neck with her dog tags. Nate could not raise an objection, however. Just as the dog tags were permissible in the tank, so was religious and matrimonial jewelry. There had been instances of people dying in a Gravity Couch, and woe betide those who thought to deprive them of their comforting icons.

Nate swabbed, stabbed. Mabel winced, followed up with a pained smile, went to her tank, and laid down.

"Captain Corduroy …"

Wendy turned her head, her expression darkening. Dipper was approaching, an almost pleading look on his face. He had stripped down to black bikini underwear.

"Not now," Wendy said, sharply. She looked around, found Soos, gestured to him. He walked over. "Soos, show Dr. Pines to his couch, please."

Dipper shut his mouth. Soos took the scientist's arm, gently, leading him away from Wendy.

Nate approached, intent on Wendy. Making sure I get the point, as Lee says.

Wendy offered her arm.

Soos kept his light hold on Dipper's arm as he led him over to an unattended Gravity Couch. Dipper was not sure whether he should be offended or complimented by this very specific treatment, deciding, in the end, to have little or no reaction at all, blanking everything out as usual.

Dipper looked the Gravity Couch over, uncertain. His name was written in black marker on a piece of masking tape stuck to an open area on the operations plate. The tube was lined with padding, the gel feeders almost invisible.

His chest tightened, and he had difficulty breathing. Soos's hand tightened slightly on his arm, reassuring, but it did not make the anxiety attack cease.

He looked at his face, smiling warmly at him as he tried to regain control. "First time in a grav couch, dude?"

Dipper swallowed hard, and found that his throat was dry. "Yeah."

Soos checked over the Gravity Couch with a practiced eye, inspecting the seals and checking the lining. Taking Dipper's arm again, he helped him to get into place inside the tall tube.

Over at the other side of the medical bay, Nate, was administering a shot to Captain Corduroy. As Nate withdrew the needle, Wendy straightened het arm out, flexing the muscles, making her pale skin ripple. Silent, Wendy climbed into her Gravity Couch and closed her eyes.

Wendy dealt with, Nate came toward Dipper, who felt his chest tighten again.

Scientist or not, he had been terrified of medical procedures since childhood; needles were the worst. He had never even been able to tolerate local anesthetics for dental work—one look at that hypo of Novocain and he was fleeing for his life.

Distracting himself, Dipper said, "Your captain seems to have some sort of problem with me."

Soos smiled again. "Don't worry about her, dude," he said, the undertone of his voice suggesting to Dipper that he thought Wendy was just a big old teddybear under all the gruff authority. "She loves having complete strangers on board."

_Very reassuring_ , Dipper thought.

Nate was at his side, now, Soos giving way to him, going off to prepare himself. Silently, focused on his work, Nate took Dipper's arm, swabbing it with alcohol. The treatment was not particularly kind, verging on painful. Dipper did not feel singled out for special mistreatment, however—even Wendy had been handled brusquely.

Still, he disliked the process. Trying to keep his mind of what was to come, he said, "Is that really necessary?"

Nate gave him a measured look, not answering for a moment. _Trying to decide if I'm a complete idiot or just blowing smoke_ , Dipper thought, uneasily.

An eyebrow raised, Nate said, "When the ion drive fires, we'll be taking about thirty gees. Without a tank, the force would liquefy your skeleton." The doctor's tone was patronizing, and Dipper bridled at this.

"I've seen the effect on mice," Dipper said, more sharply than he had intended. The ship, he knew, also had inertial dampers that mitigated the effects of acceleration.

Nate shook his head, sighing, and Dipper knew that he had failed whatever sort of idiot test Nate had. He closed his eyes and held his breath, wishing himself to some other, kinder, place. Once again, his prayers were not answered. There was a sharp pain in his arm as Nate jabbed a needle into his arm, followed by a worse pain as the doctor injected the medication into him. Dipper winced, bit his lip. Liquid warmth spread from the injection site, up and down his arm.

He opened his eyes again, to see Nate disposing of the hypodermic and the swab. The doctor turned back, reaching for the Couch door. He saw Dipper's expression, took stock of the scientist's tense posture. "Claustrophobic?"

"Very," Dipper said, grateful that someone was at least paying a little attention to him. He was even more grateful for the warm lethargy that was beginning to steal over him.

Nate slammed the Couch door. There was the sound of the door being dogged shut, somewhere in the distance.

Dipper faded.

Dipper dreamed.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Fifty-six days out of Daylight Station, with Neptune looming close, the USAC Lewis and Clark responded to its own inner voices. Its crew slept on, entombed in the heart of the spaceship, but it did not need them, not right now.

For fifty-six days the Lewis and Clark had answered only the call of its own electronic mind. Now it followed a new compulsion, approaching its target.

Maneuvering thrusters fired in sequence, first correcting pitch and yaw, then, stability ensured, firing delicate bursts at just the right vectors to cause its lumbering bulk to slowly roll forward.

Head over heels, the Lewis and Clark turned to face back the way it had come. Thrusters fired again, stopping the roll. A silent countdown followed.

The ion drive ignited, a brilliance that, out here at least, shamed the sun. Fusion fire roared silently in the vacuum, slowing the ship.

Inside the heart of the vessel, another countdown began. When it was done, the sleepers would awaken.

The Lewis and Clark flew on.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a voice, somewhere, calling him. The world was dark, formless.  
Somehow, he knew this place. He was a blind man, a deaf man, his senses cut away, leaving him void.

The voice came again, but now it deepened, thickened, became a swirling mass of noise, the massed choir of the damned pouring under and over. Humanity tangled with inhumanity in that terrible knotwork of sound, abrading him as it passed, leaving him bleeding at the edges of his soul.

A tiny corner of his conscious mind informed him that he was enduring the effects of his time in the Gravity Couch. He was reawakening.

Reassured by this thought, he somehow managed to open his eyes, to see. The other Gravity Couches came into sight, each of them filled with an inert-figure suspended in dark fluid. Fair enough, that was how he must look, then.

With shocking abruptness, his viewpoint whirled about. Suddenly, he was staring at his own tank with its piece of yellowing masking tape stuck to the operations panel. His body was immobile, eyes closed. He could not tell whether he was looking upon a sleeping man or gazing at a corpse. For all he knew, they were all dead.

Whispering again, someone whispering.

The sound resolved slowly: a woman's voice in the distance, voice hushed and bodiless, the sounds of a specter.

Forlorn, that voice, and now it was becoming clearer.

"Dipper…"

He felt ice creep from his crotch to his heart, and found himself wondering how a ghost could experience sensation. He wanted to explore now, to find the voice, answer its siren call.

Before him, his body, formerly dead, if only in hypersleep, came to life, eyes opening. In a flash, his vision shading to green for a moment, Dipper found himself back inside his own flesh, firmly anchored. His world was liquid, warm, filled with tinted blurs. He had no sense of breathing.

He had no sense of panic.

"I'm so cold…"

His Gravity Couch drained, the gel sluicing away with remarkable speed. He could move now, if only in slow motion. Lifting a hand, he pressed his palm against the cold door, pushing. The door opened easily.

Another sound in the distance, reverberant in a place that should have been anechoic: drip… drip… drip. The sound of water dripping where it was not supposed to drip.

He looked around, found the crew members still suspended in their tanks. Only he had been awakened and had emerged. Why is that? he wondered. No answer was forthcoming, and he discovered that this did not concern him at the moment.  
The dripping continued, filling his world.

The voice came again, whispering through the ship. "I'm so cold…"

Drawn, he walked, slow-motion, to the hatchway and found that his tentative steps were being made in twenty-league boots, covering great distances through the ship. Within several steps he was at the bridge of the Lewis and Clark, standing in the second level, behind the pilot's chair.

Dripping.

Water dripped to the floor of the bridge, making pools, running in rivulets along the plating. The pilot's chair was soaked, streaming. A woman sat in the chair, her too-pale skin drenched, glittering, her sodden hair plastered to her naked back.

As thought rooted to the deck, Dipper stood and stared. Uncertainly, he whispered, "Hello?"

There was no answer from the woman in the pilot's chair, nor did she move.

She gave no indication that she knew anyone was there.

No indication that she was even alive.

There was only the sound of the water dripping. He could not hear the sound of breathing, not even his.

Slowly, he reached out to touch her shoulder, hesitated, feeling cold stealing over his fingertips.

Fear bubbled darkly within him, rose.

He pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist.

No movement, no sound, only water.

He forced his hand to unclench, straightening the fingers. He reached out slowly, ignoring the cold, touching her hair, feeling the cold wetness. No reaction. He might as well have been touching a statue.

He looked down, hoping for a glimpse of her face, a reflection, finding it in the moribund computer displays. There was something wrong with the reflection, though, something distorted. The planes and contours of her face were shifting, as though something lived under the skin, in the bone, and was pushing angrily to be free.

The fear welled up in a dark torrent now, soul-poisonous and choking.

Panicking, he spun her chair, making it rock on its gimbals.

Mabel stared up at him.

"I'm waiting," she said, the sound filling this reality with undertones of screaming, hissing, crawling voices. His soul splintered. The darkness swept through him. Silence.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He fell through the silence, through the darkness, all sensation absent.

His eyes opened, and he was flooded with light. There was a sucking sound too close to his head, then a humming that made him wince, his mind and body too sensitive, too raw to withstand it for very long. There was something in his mouth, coating his tongue, making him salivate uncontrollably.

Surging from the darkness and silence, falling back into the world, he found himself surrounded by metal and plastic, a coffin too tight around him, crushing in, threatening him with suffocation and darkness. There was light, in front of him, but he found that he could not reach it through the wall around his body.  
Something moved toward him through the bright blur.

His heart pounded frantically, making the veins in his neck and wrist pulse. Blood seemed replaced with fire, yet he felt cold all over, layered with ice.

Unable to think, to reason out a proper course of action, he lifted his hands and pushed at the door of his Gravity Couch. The inner surface was slick with the remnants of the gel, smearing as his hands slipped. Furiously, he pounded the heel of his right hand against the unyielding door, trying to make it give way. This effort availed him nothing.

He lurched backward, as far as he could go, intending to kick at the door, to pummel it with his heels to make it give, to allow him freedom to breathe. Before he could strike the first blow, there was a loud hydraulic hiss, deafening in the confined space. His tomb opened to decant him.

Off balanced, Dipper fell forward, his feet sliding in gel on the floor of the tank. With no one to catch him and nothing to grab to stop his fall, he crashed to the deck, his right shoulder, hip, and knee flaring with pain. Gel and saliva poured from his mouth, pooled by his face as he gasped for breath, a human fish drowning in oxygen. His lungs and bronchia flamed, tried to close up, leaving him wheezing and moving weakly as the claustrophobia continued to shake him, closing his mind down in a paroxysm of terror. The medical bay was a vague place to him, perceived through a veil. He fought for focus, but it would not come.

Mabel was quickly at his side, one hand on his shoulder, another on his wrist, so familiar, so warm, adjusting so that she could take a reading of his pulse.  
"Mabel…" he said, his voice little more than a gasp. The last thing he remembered was Mabel. Something wrong with Mabel.

He felt his sister's hands tighten on him, trying to soothe, trying to calm him-back to this reality he had fallen into. He knew that she wanted to get inside his head, to deal with this latest crisis of his, but he refused that help, had always refused that kind of help. He railed against her contact, not wanting to release either the past or the nightmare until he understood it, had mapped the geography of life gone awry.  
He gasped in another breath and the fires shot into his head, into his belly.

"Nate!" Mabel called, her voice urgent. Her hands tightened again, then relaxed as she said, "It's okay, bro-bro! I'm here! I'm right here! You're okay! I'm okay! All of us are! Just breathe." Her face came into view, a curious mixture a mother and a professional medic, concerned and observant.

Dipper wanted to fight her, to keep struggling for his anguish, but the edges of the nightmare were fading now, and the claustrophobia was easing, here in the open medical bay. There was a sense of relaxation in his chest, and he found that it was becoming easier to breathe. The graying at the edges of his vision began to recede, leaving a scattering of little stars flashing in his vision.

Dipper looked up. All of the crew stood in a circle around him, looking down.  
Nate, emergency pack in hand, was kneeling beside him, checking him over for serious damage. Dipper had no doubt that Nate could, if necessary, have him sedated in a matter of moments.

He stared up at his sister and suddenly hugged her as tight as he could. He felt her tense for a brief second, but she returned the hug with equal force. "It's okay. You're alright", she said. Dipper closed his eyes for a moment as his body began to relax.  
He looked up at Nate, released himself from his sister and tried to push himself into at least a sitting position.

"I'm all right now," he said, knowing it to be a magnificent lie. Stubbornly, not willing to admit that the truth fell far short of the statement, he repeated his assertion: "I'm all right."

To prove the point to those of the crew who doubted this assertion—everyone, as far as he could tell—he tried to push himself to his feet. His legs shook violently as he tried to stand, and his knees buckled, the muscles refusing to have anything to do with his intended course of action. Nate caught him before he could tumble back to the deck, helping him to stay upright. Mabel stood on the other side of him for support. Nate was a cold monolith.

"Move slowly," Nate said, staring at him without flinching. "You've been in stasis for fifty-six days. You're going to experience a little disorientation."

A little. Something dark had crawled into his dreams in the tank, and he was not quite back in the real world now. Reality had not spun around him as confusedly as this since the first time he had ridden to orbit, taking an ill-advised window seat in the big elevator car on Skyhook One.

Nate quickly looked Dipper over before letting him go. Dipper wobbled for a moment, unsteady and queasy, but finally managed to keep his balance. There was a faint sense of embarrassment at standing there in nothing more than bikini briefs, the center of attention for the entire crew, but there was nothing to be done about that.

At least there was Lee, still bare-ass naked and utterly free of all concern, leaning in to Dipper and saying, "Damn, Dr. Pines, don't scare us like that!" Dipper gave him a sickly smile.

"Coffee?"

"What?" Dipper said.

Lee trotted over to the wall, pulling out a large metal cylinder. He held this up for Dipper to see. "Coffee."

Dipper frowned in understanding, an expression that made his face hurt. "No, thank you." Lee shrugged and turned away.

The crew had returned to purposeful movement, leaving Dipper standing, confused and disconsolate, in the middle of the room. Wendy was already into her flight suit, while Robbie, in a corner, did stretching exercises, limbering himself up.

Lee, still showing no concern about dressing, had opened the metal cylinder and was pouring coffee into a mug he had retrieved from one cubbyhole or another. Nate had stowed his emergency kit and quickly pulled on a flight suit. Tambry was climbing into her flight suit, drawing an admiring glance from Lee who, Dipper noted, was mainly admiring Tambry's backside.

Without looking around, Tambry flipped Lee the bird. His eyes lit up as he smiled. "Is that an offer?"

"It is not," was Tambry's growled reply.

Dipper went in search of his own clothes, trying to understand how anyone could get used to the effects of long-term Gravity Couch suspension. His entire body felt toxic and his mind was sluggish, drained of energy and knowledge. He felt unwilling and unable to accommodate anyone's needs right now—he was not sure that he could even manage to dress.

At least they were close to their—his—goal. The Event Horizon was waiting, full of truths that were rightfully his. He had sent the Event Horizon and her crew down the rabbit hole. Whatever knowledge she had gleaned about Wonderland was his to hold first.

Wendy pulled on her boots, quickly lacing them up, then zipped up her flight suit. There was no sign of playfulness about her, only an economy of movement that Dipper envied and a fierce energy that left him apprehensive.

Wendy turned towards Tambry, who was pulling on her boots. "Tambry," she said, "why aren't you on the bridge?"

Tambry gave her an acidic look, but it was not enough to make Wendy relent. Still, she was not about to be bullied. Lacing up a boot, she growled back, "Do you mind if I get dressed first?"

"Yes I do," Wendy said. She bunched her hands into fists, put those on her hips, planted her feet apart, turning her head, surveying her crew, her domain. Dipper honestly did not want to cross this woman. "Come on, people, let's go!"

Tambry was the first one through the exit, followed closely by Robbie, Mabel, Soos, and Nate. Wendy turned to follow, then swung back, his face a study in thunder. "And, Lee," the Captain added, giving Lee's crotch a withering glance, "put some goddamn pants on."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seemed to Dipper as though activity aboard the Lewis and Clark, once begun, never paused for a moment. Wendy, Tambry, and Robbie went forward, into the bridge, to do whatever it was that spaceship bridge crews did at times like these.

Somewhere along the way, Sos had handed him a big warm blanket and he had wrapped himself in this, hoping to combat the shivering. He knew he was suffering from some kind of shock related to the time he had spent suspended in the Gravity Couch, but at the moment he would have preferred not to have any kind of ability to think. Either sleep or a nice warm corner would have done just as well. Neither Mabel nor Lee had been able to convince him that the ship's interior temperature was reasonable—he felt cold.

Mabel, Lee, and Soos had set to in the crew's quarters, turning them into a place to spend time, opening bunks, unfolding tables, taking out chairs. The Lewis and Clark was a fine example of environmental engineering, Dipper thought, with just about everything aboard designed to fit into a niche or fold away. It was easy for the crew to make room or ready the ship for the powerful thrust from the ion drive.

At the moment, Nate was moving around in the cabin, checking radiation badges, apparently for something to do while he avoided talking to Dipper. For the moment, Dipper found it hard to care—if anything, he would rather be left alone, huddled on a chair at the side of the cabin. This particular misery was not something he had anticipated. Scribbling equations all over reams of paper did not prepare a man for the realities of deep-space travel.

Lee, Mabel, and Soos had finished setting up the crew's quarters and were now comfortable on bunks, Soos watching a video unit. The two crew members were engaged in pitching a small ball back and forth across the cabin, their expressions gradually easing into mock display of contempt for each other.

Lee once again snatched the ball out of the air, sneering at Mabel.

"When are you gonna put some heat on that?" He snapped the ball back at Mabel.

She caught it, staring into Lee's eyes, challenging. "You can't handle my junk, don't ask for the heat." The ball sailed back again, straight for Lee's head.

"Come on, dudes! Easy with the ball throwing!" Soos said, not looking up from the video unit he was watching. Both Lee and Mabel ignored this automatic response from him, continuing to toss the ball between them, somehow managing to avoid Nate.

Dipper leaned forward, tilting his head, curious about the video she was watching. He had taken out a handheld unit, rather than using the Lewis and Clark's main video system, and the sounds he had been hearing confirmed his suspicion—this was something of a more private nature rather than a professional production of some kind.

Soos saw Dipper looking over at his video unit, and he had a momentary flash of embarrassment at being caught in his peeping game. Rather than the negative reaction Dipper expected, however, Soos turned slightly, tilting the unit so that Dipper could see the screen. Soos turned his attention back to what she was watching.

Dipper focused on the screen, blinking as the image changed rapidly, blurring first with a panning movement, then with a too-fast zoom. He saw the makings of a party, ribbons, balloons, heard the sounds of children and a thin background of music.

The image blurred again, then blanked. The screen cleared to show a child in a wheelchair. Dipper estimated the boy's age at four or five, wondering how far off he was. He could make only a bare guess at the nature of the child's handicap, or how long he had been in the wheelchair, though the chair itself did not appear to have been heavily used. The boy was grinning happily, waving his arms. Not quadriplegic then, he thought; a simple paraplegia of some kind, leaving the mind intact and the body more or less functional. Some of these physical dysfunctions could be corrected now, with the help of nanosurgery, but not all.

The boy held up his arms, laughing. "Play horsey, Daddy, play horsey!" he called.

The image shook and shifted and abruptly zoomed back. Soos came into view on the video screen, looking sunny and relaxed. To Dipper, he did not look the slightest bit like someone who spent a great deal of time in space.

Soos, watching, smiled.

Soos, on the screen, laughing, cried, "Want to play horsey, do ya?" in a voice that bespoke fatherhood and joy. He bent and grasped the child in one long swooping motion that made the boy howl with delight, lifting him out of the wheelchair, flying him through the air, somehow ending up with him on his back.

Somewhere deep inside Dipper there was an ache. He chose not to address it, choosing instead to accept the diversion of Wendy striding through the hatchway, coming back to the crew quarters from the bridge. He kept his silence as Wendy sat down next to Soos, giving him a sympathetic glance.

"I put in for a replacement for you," Wendy said, without even glancing at Dipper, "but on short notice like this…"

She might as well have pointed a finger directly at Dipper. Shame burned in Dipper's chest, mixed with an uncomfortable rage. It isn't my fault! he thought angrily. He had not planned this, arid he had not singled out Wendy's ship and crew. Wendy did not seem to want to approach this rationally.

Soos shrugged and shut off the video unit, putting it aside. "No, no, it's all right. It's cool," he said, and gave Dipper a friendly, understanding glance, almost speaking to him. "I talked to Melody. She'll take care of Denny until I get back from this." He gave Wendy a brittle smile that told the truth about his dilemma and his feelings. "So everything's all right."

Tambry and Robbie arrived, also coming back from the bridge, both of them looking tense, neither of them paying Dipper much attention. Tambry sat down next to Wendy, leaning forward, while Robbie took up a position behind the chair Dipper was huddling on. Dipper looked around, up, for a moment, risking a crick in his neck. Robbie looked down at him like the wrath of God, his dark eyes unwavering. It figured, Dipper thought. He had managed to usurp the pilot's regular crew quarters chair.

Lee and Mabel paid the psychodrama no attention whatsoever, tossing the ball back and forth.

Behind Dipper, Robbie intoned, "Two hours to Neptune orbit." The words had all the sound and authority of the Last Trump, meant to make Dipper quake.

Robbie's pronouncement out of the way, Tambry looked at Wendy and said, "All boards are green, everything's five by five."

"That's good to know," Wendy rumbled. The ball whizzed by her, on its way from Lee to Mabel. Wendy gave the younger woman an impatient look that was tinged with the suggestion of violence. "Mabel, you wanna stow that, please?"

Mabel clutched the ball to her chest, looking abashed. Lee grinned at her, while Soos offered a "I told you so!" look. Dad might let the boys and girls get away with it, but Mom was home now….

Wendy leaned forward, clasping her hands together, her expression deadly serious. "Okay, listen up," she said, looking around at his crew. "As you all know, we have an addition to our crew. Dr. Pines, this is: Tambry, my XO; Robbie, pilot; I think it's obvious you know our ship's engineer, Mabel-"

"We call her Baby Bear," Lee interrupted, sliding smoothly into the gap that Wendy granted him. Mabel grinned and Tambry snorted, amused.

Wendy looked around at Lee, who was lounging insouciantly on his bunk.

"This is Lee. What the hell do you do on this ship, anyway?"

Lee gave a show of thinking, his eyebrows working.

Taking his cue, Mabel said, "Ballast."

Lee leaned down over the side of the bunk, threatening to slide off onto the deck. He gave Dipper a kissy-face stare that made the scientist flinch back.

"I am your best friend," Lee said, his voice singsong, "I am a lifesaver and a heartbreaker…"

Dipper was not sure how he should react to this particular display, so he chose to avoid a response altogether. Helplessly, he looked at Wendy, who looked impatiently back. "He's a rescue technician. Soos, medical technician, Nate…"

"Trauma," Nate said, softly.

So Nate and Soos were the medical tag team, one dealing with the broken ones Soos could not easily fix.

Lee hauled himself back onto his bunk, his expression serious for once. "All right, everybody knows each other. So what are we doing all the way out here, Red?"

"Dr. Pines?" Wendy said, turning to look at the bedraggled scientist.

Dipper cleared his throat, hesitating. At the beginning he had imagined dramatic pronouncements and grand moments. Instead, he was wrapped in a blanket, stuffed into a spacecraft that had very little to do with human comfort, and presented with a small crew that was almost openly hostile. Had he known how things were to have worked out, he would still have demanded to go with the salvage crew.

It was time he tried to smooth things over.

This in mind, he said, "First of all, I'd like to say how much I appreciate this opportunity—"

Wendy rolled her eyes, shook her head, anger radiating off of her in waves. "Dr. Pines," she growled slowly, "we did not volunteer for this mission. We were pulled off leave to be sent to Neptune. It is three billion klicks past even the remotest outpost." Wendy took a deep breath. "And the last time the USAC attempted a rescue this far out, we lost both ships. So, please… cut to it."

So there was another root cause of Wendy's attitude. Rescue and salvage was Wendy's life, and she knew the odds for success in most situations. What Dipper knew and he believed Wendy would eventually learn was that the Event Horizon was extraordinary, that the mission they were on was without precedent.

Dipper took a deep breath. "Ok. Everything I am about to tell you is considered Code Black by the NSA."

Dipper paused, letting the crew have time to look at each other. A Code Black classification was not something a crew like this would hear on a regular basis. Interservice rivalries had not waned since the paranoia of the 1950s, with bureaucratic interchanges turning into nightmares of documents, codes, classifications, protocols, and formats. For USAC to accept a National Security Agency Code Black without apparent comment indicated something very serious, very unpleasant.

Whatever was going on here, it was bigger than USAC. The crew had not known that beforehand. Dipper wondered if they would develop an increased respect for him. He doubted it.

Lee looked back at Dipper, then at Wendy. From her bunk, Mabel said, "That means top secret, Lee."

Lee looked around at her. "You don't need to tell me about Code Black, Baby Bear." Dipper heard the attempt at joviality in Lee's voice. The rescue tech simply could not sustain it.

Dipper took a deep breath. The crew was finding its own level for this, giving him a chance to go on. He tugged the blanket more tightly around his body, resisting the urge to shiver. "The USAC intercepted a radio transmission from a decaying orbit around Neptune. The source has been identified. . . . . as the Event Horizon.'"

There was dead silence.

Dipper waited. He wished he could hide. This was not his job.

Her eyes flashing as she turned to glare at him, Tambry snapped, "That's impossible!" She looked around the cabin, almost surged forward. "She was lost with all hands, what, seven years ago?"

Mabel winced, all playfulness lost. "Yeah, the reactor blew."

"How can we salvage—" Soos started, turning to Dipper, a confused expression on his face. Dipper knew what Soos had to be thinking: there could be nothing to salvage, aside from a few bits of radioactive debris.

Standing behind Dipper, now leaning closer to him, an angry, threatening presence, Robbie growled, "Let the dead rest, man." Dipper turned to look at Robbie, chills racing up his spine.

Lee was getting wound up now. Dipper turned his attention back to him, hearing him yelling angrily, "… Cancel our leave and send us out on some bullshit mission!" as he waved his fists in the air. He looked as though he was about to slide down from his bunk to stalk furiously around the crew quarters. Dipper did not think that Lee was about to turn violent, but he was no psychologist. He figured that there was no good reason to put theory to the test in this case.

Wendy let the racket go on for a few more moments, then stood up, holding her hands in the air as she bellowed, "Everybody shut up!" Silence fell again.

Dipper's ears were ringing. "Let the man speak."

Wendy sat down again.

Dipper took another deep breath. He hoped that what he was about to say would change the perspective of this crew enough for them to be of use to him in retrieving his ship.

"What was made public about the Event Horizon," Dipper went on, "that she was a deep-space research vessel, that its reactor went critical, that the ship blew up… none of that is true." There was silence now, and he had their undivided attention, having introduced them to the idea of cover-up and conspiracy. That was juicy, something for them to fasten on to. "The Event Horizon was the culmination of a secret government project to create a spacecraft capable of faster-than-light flight."

They were all staring at him again, their expressions shocked. This was not something they had heard about, had not even suspected. It had not been possible to keep the Event Horizon completely secret once the pure development process was over and the construction process began, but it had been possible to keep a lid on the true nature and purpose of the project. There had been a desire for a deep-space research platform after the successes in exploiting the asteroid belt, and the Event Horizon project had played into that, hiding the truth in plain sight. No one had known what might happen.

In the end, no one had known what had happened, out here at Neptune.

Robbie, the ominous edge gone from his voice, said, "You can't do that."

"The law of relativity prohibits faster-than-light travel," Tambry said, before Dipper could answer Robbie. These people were still trying to deal with the concepts and ideas illuminated by Einstein; they were unlikely to reach as high as the work of Hawking, or even Gribbin, probably considering quarks to be the noises made by ducks and tachyons as something you used to hang a picture.

Patiently, Dipper said, "Relativity, yes." He paused for a moment, trying to bring things a bit closer to the level of those he had to deal with. "We can't break the law of relativity, but we can go around it. The ship doesn't really move faster than light"—he gestured with his hands, his blanket becoming more precarious with his motion—"it creates a dimensional gateway that allows the ship to instantaneously jump from one point in the universe to another, light years away."

They were all watching intently now, trying to understand him.

"How?" Tambry asked. Her voice had a glassy edge.

Dipper shrugged. "Well, it's difficult to…" He stopped, feeling helpless as the equations glowed across his mind, a pure blend of mathematics and practical physics. One day he had known how to bend space and had then set out to prove it. "It's all math, you see… but…" He trailed off again, still trying to reduce the concepts. He had cracked the sky. Now he had to explain it to these people. "In layman's terms, you use a rotating magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons; these in turn fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you have a singularity…"

Wendy was staring at him, shaking her head. "'Layman's terms.'"

Dipper closed his eyes momentarily, trying to compose himself.

Lee was lunging over the side of his bunk again. "Fuck 'laymen's terms' man, do you speak English?"

Dipper opened his eyes, sighing. How in the name of hell was he supposed to get these concepts across to people who could barely function without an Ezy-Guide and good fortune? He looked around the cramped crew's quarters, spotting the edge of something, a poster, on the inside of an open locker door.

"Hmm. . . . . Okay, let's try this," he said, reaching out without thinking, and tearing the poster down. The name on the locker door, as it bounced shut, was ROBBIE V. That did not matter now.

"Excuse me…" Robbie started, more shocked at Dipper's abrupt action than outraged at his audacity. Dipper shot him a look, and the pilot took a step backwards, not saying anything else.

Dipper turned back to the other crew members, holding up the poster, making the paper snap in his hands. Doggedly, he said, "Say this paper represents space-time…" He slapped the pinup onto the nearest flat surface then made a half-turn, picking up a pen as he did so. He quickly marked an X on the pinup, putting the letter A at one side. "And you want to get from point A here to point B here." He scribbled another X, this time marked with a B. "Now. What's the shortest distance between two points?"

The crew members stared at him as though he had turned into a raving idiot.

What did they expect? There were non-Euclidian geometries involved here, and many human minds could not go around the requisite corners. He knew that his audience resented being thrown back into grade school, but it was the only way he knew how to get even a fraction of the concepts across.

Finally, Mabel said, "A straight line." She had a confused look, as though she was certain something was missing from the answer. The other crew members turned to stare at the engineer, who proceeded to glare back at them, annoyed and embarrassed. "What?"

"Sorry sis, but wrong," Dipper said, with a sympathetic smile. Everyone turned to stare at the scientist again.

"The shortest distance between two points is zero." He held the poster up, folding it so that the first X was over the second. With a fast, vicious, movement he drove the pen through the layers of paper. Melodramatic but functional; Robbie hadn't even complained about the wanton destruction of his pinup.

He lowered the poster, looking at them intently. "That's what the singularity does—it folds space, so that point A and point B coexist in the same space and time. After the ship passes through this gateway, space returns to normal." He handed the punctured poster back to Robbie, who took it gingerly, looking at Dipper as though the scientist might turn rabid at any moment. "It's called a gravity drive."

Tambry was watching Dipper intently, genuinely curious. "How do you know all this?"

There was the Million Dollar Question. Dipper squared his shoulders and said, "I helped build it."

Lee made a noise that indicated that he was either impressed or coming to a boil. For good measure, he added, "I can see why they sent you along."

Soos was frowning now, though, obviously putting the bits and pieces of information together and coming up with a result he liked less and less with each passing moment. "So if the ship didn't blow up, what happened?"

"The mission was going perfectly," Dipper said, frowning, remembering. "Like a textbook. The ship reached safe distance using conventional thrusters. All the systems looked good." He sat back, his enthusiasm and drive draining as the memories flooded back in. The Event Horizon had torn a hole in the heavens and his life had been sucked into it. "All the systems looked good… they received the go-ahead to activate the gravity drive and open the gateway to Proxima Centauri, the sun's closest star."

Dipper paused for a few moments, lost in the past, replaying those hours, those days in Central Operations. Everything had come crashing down in such a short span of time, taking the foundations of his entire life.

"She vanished from all our scopes. Disappeared without a trace." He paused, looked at Wendy. The Captain was watching him intently. "Until now."

Wendy grimaced, but her eyes were full of curiosity. She needed to know.

"So . . . . Where has it been the past seven years?" Dipper sat back, his blanket forgotten. "That's what we're here to find out."


	3. Chapter 3

The bridge was not a place for fast movement, but Dipper was managing all right, fitting into a corner. Wendy had assumed her throne, of course, but had chosen to sit quietly, listening to all that Dipper had to say without spending her energy to comment. So far. It was obvious to Dipper that Wendy considered het crew to be far more than mere functional appendages.

They had gone as far as possible in the crew quarters, then moved up to the bridge for the second part of the show. If the introduction had rattled the Lewis and Clark's crew, Dipper thought, then the next part would freeze their blood.

"We haven't been able to confirm any live contact," Dipper said, leaning backwards, his arms crossed over his chest, "but the TDRS did receive a single transmission." He felt a little more in control now, a little more together.

He reached out and pressed a key on a nearby computer keypad. The terrifying sound that poured from the bridge speakers had become familiar before leaving Daylight Station, but he could still feel the effects, could still sense the inhuman swirl beneath the static and corruption. Some of the elements rose and fell in a familiar pattern while others seemed to rise and fade in new patterns each time.

Dipper watched their faces as the recording played through, watched them become pale and fearful as they endured the voice of the Event Horizon. The sounds ceased abruptly, causing them to respond with spasmodic physical movements before anyone could gain control of themselves.

They looked at each other, at Dipper.

"The fuck was that?" Robbie whispered, all of his posturing and his energy drained for the moment. He was staring at Dipper like a lost man.

Soos looked up at Wendy, who sat impassively in her chair, then back at Dipper. "It doesn't sound like anything human," Soos said, his words coming slowly.

Dipper nodded. "Houston has passed the recording through several filters and isolated what appears to be a human voice." It was stretching things somewhat to describe that voice as human, he knew, but it seemed to be the best that anyone could do at the time. There had been no communication from Earth regarding further refinements.

Dipper tapped another key. If the first recording had spooked the crew of the Lewis and Clark, this one shook them to the core. It was a howl from a soul abandoned and despairing on the far edge of hell. Dipper felt it in the darker recesses of his soul even now, having heard it several times.

"Jesus," Robbie said. He looked as though the voice had cut straight through him. The other crew members, even Wendy, were having a hard time staying put and listening to the playback. Tambry had her head down, concentrating.

Wendy looked at Dipper, intent.

"We're not even sure that it qualifies as language," Dipper said, as the playback ended.

Tambry looked up at him, his expression dark. "Latin."

Surprised, Dipper raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

Tambry opened her mouth again, then hesitated for a moment, almost looking inward. "I mean…" She took a deep breath. "It sounds like it might be Latin."

Lee stared at Tambry, disbelieving. There was no trace of his sense of humor now. "Latin? Who the fuck speaks Latin?"

Nate looked around at Lee, his lip curling. "No one. It's a dead language."

"Mostly dead," Tambry said, her voice firm. She stared directly at Dipper, who refused to flinch.

Wendy leaned forward, looking down at Tambry. "Can you translate?"

Tambry licked her lips, then said to Dipper, "Play that back, please."

Dipper tapped the key again, and the voice screamed through the room. This time Tambry tried to focus on the voice, tried to sketch words out of the electronic muck.

"Right there," she said, hearing something in the sound. "That sounds like 'liberaté mé.'" She frowned, losing the thread. "I can't make out the rest. It's too distorted."

Wendy leaned forward, now looking at Tambry. "'Liberaté mé'?"

Tambry turned to face Wendy. "'Save me.'"

Lee turned back to Tambry, a dubious expression on his face. "From what?"

Wendy sat back, steepling her hands, her eyes on Dipper. "You're convinced the crew could still be alive?"

"The Event Horizon only had life support for eighteen months," Dipper said, considering the possibilities. He had considered just about everything along the way, including the possibility of some kind of time distortion that might have thrown the Event Horizon seven years forward. "It seems impossible, but in light of the transmission…" He took a deep breath. He had never been able to make the math work for a time distortion. "I have to think that some endured until now."

Lee looked up at Wendy. Some of the playfulness was creeping back into his expressions, his voice. "Red, do we get hazard pay for this?"

"You heard the tape, Lee," Wendy said. The Captain had a wry expression.

"We're looking for survivors."

The bridge was suddenly filled with the sound of a blaring alarm. Wendy looked up, consulting readouts. "Here we go, people," Wendy said. "Stations."

The bridge cleared as Soos, Tambry, and Lee raced back for their standard stations. Dipper clambered down the bridge ladder, heading for the flight seat that had been made ready for him.

Strapping himself in, he noted that he was almost excited. He was coming home to his ship.

His creation.

He smiled.

 

Lewis and Clark was closing on Neptune. Wendy looked over the Heads-Up Display on the main window, squinting at the bright blue light pouring in through the thick quartz. It was easier to draw the pertinent data from his own readouts, so she turned her attention to those instead.

Tamby, also ignoring the HUD, announced, "Crossing the horizon. Optimum approach angle is fourteen degrees."

Wendy looked over her instruments and made some quick decisions. Dipper could twist space to his heart's content, she thought, but he could never gut-fly a ship like this one. Wendy was in her element, no matter how far out they were.

Wendy said, "Come around to three-three-four."

Scanning over her displays, she wondered what they were going to find when they met up with the Event Horizon. That gut-wrenching racket Pines had played was an indication that something strange was going on here. As far as Wendy was concerned, second-guessing these situations was a bad idea, sometimes fatal. You could not set expectations and go charging into potentially deadly situations with preconceptions locked into place. You had to be flexible.

Robbie said, "Heading three-three-four."

Wendy felt the ship shifting. "Make your approach vector negative fourteen degrees."

"One-four degrees," Robbie echoed, and Wendy felt the ship adjusting course again. There. She could feel the thrusters moving to new positions, firing a controlled sequence of bursts that would kill some of their velocity and tighten their orbit. There was something else now—a mild vibration that traveled through the frame of the ship. They were starting to encounter the fringes of Neptune's atmosphere and from here onward the journey could turn into quite a roller coaster ride.

Wendy watched her instruments as the Lewis and Clark continued its cautious descent. Blue light was replaced by blue-tinged gloom as methane clouds rushed by the bridge windows. The hull temperature was rising as they ploughed into the atmosphere, but the ablative shielding and heat tiles were holding up beautifully, keeping the heat away from the main body of the ship, but for some reason, Wendy felt cold.


	4. Chapter 4

Graphic images flashed and scattered across the displays, with one significant image locking into the center of the HUD. Wendy scanned this new display with some satisfaction. The information in the display came from the main ID transponder for the Event Horizon, and included the ship's registry codes and other identification.

Tambry said, "We have a lock on the Event Horizon's navigation beacon." She made some quick corrections, focused on her boards. At times like this, Wendy would have sworn that Tambry somehow fused her mind to the main piloting computer. "It's in the upper ionosphere. We are in for some chop."

Some chop. There were times when Tambry displayed a mastery of understatement. "Bring us in tight," Wendy said. "Mabel, how's my ship?"

Mabel was looking from display to display, continually gathering information. She glanced up for a moment, at Wendy. "Everything green on my boards, Red." She turned back to her boards again as the ship shuddered, buffeted by Neptune's outer atmosphere.

Wendy had to wonder how the Event Horizon had managed to stay aloft. As its orbit decayed into the atmosphere, the Event Horizon should have been slowed by friction, pulled down by Neptune's gravity and torn apart before the atmospheric pressure crushed the pieces.

Answers. They needed answers.

"Matching speed… now," Robbie was saying. "Range to target ten thousand meters and closing." The pilot looked up and around at Wendy. Robbie had a worried, almost fearful, expression that told Wendy that Robbie had been asking the same kind of questions about the Event Horizon. "Captain, this is… this is wrong."

Sympathetically but firmly, Wendy said, "We're all on edge, Robbie. We're a long way out."

Robbie shook his head. Wendy could read the tension in the man, watch it ripple under the skin. "That's not it, Captain. That ship was built to go faster than light… that's just wrong."

Wendy did not want to debate the issue or to discuss oddities and fearful symmetries. Robbie was making the mistake of thinking things through. At a time like this, it could lead to disaster.

"Keep us slow and steady," Wendy said, her voice firm. Listening to her, you might have thought she had not heard Robbie.

Robbie knew differently. "Yes, ma'am," he said crisply, turning back to his controls.

Wendy turned to Tambry. "Tambry, get on the horn, see if anyone's listening." She doubted there would be a response, but there were protocols to be followed here.

Tambry's fingers flickered over her boards as her eyes took on a slightly unfocused look. "This is U.S. Aerospace command vessel Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon, Event Horizon, do you read? This is the Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon…"

Wendy shut out the sound of Tambry's voice as she did the contact mantra.

Wendy leaned to the side, looking down in the direction of the extra seat and Dipper Pines. Give the scientist credit, the man had not budged from his position since being sent there.

"Dr. Pines!" Wendy called. Dipper was in the hatchway in a flash, looking up at Wendy with undisguised excitement. It made Wendy feel like a fresh steak placed before a starving dinner guest. "I think you want to see this."

Dipper clambered up the ladder and onto the flight deck, giving every impression of not noticing the shuddering of the ship as it pushed its way through the fringes of the Neptunian atmosphere. The scientist peered through the thick windows, trying to pick out his ship.

"Where is she?" Dipper said. He looked back at Wendy, then at Mabel.

Without turning, Robbie said, "Dead ahead, five thousand meters."

The Lewis and Clark shook violently and rolled sideways. Dipper grabbed a stanchion and braced his feet. Tambry was silent for a moment as Robbie's hands flew over the controls.

"We've got some weather," Robbie muttered. The ship righted itself but continued to vibrate.

"I noticed," Wendy said. She swallowed hard, trying to force her body to relax and quit trying to find a good place to run and hide. Surprises like that were never easy to deal with. They were fine, they were okay, Robbie had it under control. "Tambry, anybody home?"

Tambry looked up, shook her head. "If they are, they're screening then-calls."

"Range three thousand meters and closing," Robbie said.

Dipper was leaning forward, still holding on to the stanchion, peering out through the windows, trying to see past the clouds of methane crystals. "I can't see anything."

Neither could Wendy, who was trying the exterior cameras. The weather was thickening out there, as though trying to force them back, or into a change of course. Compounding the visual difficulties, the camera mounts were icing up as the icy clouds struck. The deicing systems were being hard-pressed to keep pace.

"Fifteen hundred meters," Robbie said, his voice urgent. "We're getting too close."

Wendy looked away from her visual displays, trying to see something through the bridge windows. "Where is it?"

Tambry went over her instruments, shaking her head, punched a control, putting an animated graphic up into the HUD. "The scope is lit. It's right in front of us." The graphic flashed confirmation: something there, something big…

"One thousand meters," Robbie announced. Now his voice held warning. Warning lights flashed red as a shrill beep pulsed through the bridge. The beep vibrated in Wendy's teeth and made her ears hurt.

"Proximity warning!" Mabel called.

Dipper looked back at Wendy, then turned back to the window. Wendy realized that she had begun to hold her breath, waiting. With an effort, she breathed out, making herself breathe normally.

"Nine hundred, eight hundred meters, seven hundred," Robbie was saying, each word harder and harder than the last. "We're right on top of it, Captain, we're gonna hit!"

Tambry whirled, staring at Wendy, waiting for the command to helm that would get them out of there, save their asses.

"Tambry —" Wendy began.

"It should be right there," she said, and turned to point, only to stare in shock as the clouds parted. "My God."

For the first time, Wendy saw the Event Horizon, enormous and dark as it threatened to blot out the blue of Neptune.

"Reverse thrusters full!" Wendy yelled.

Tambry and Robbie complied.

The Lewis and Clark screamed.

The ship bucked and shook, shedding velocity and changing vectors under emergency power. Dipper was almost hurled forward, into the windows, but somehow managed to keep his precarious handhold on the bridge. The hull sounded in response to the thrusters, then settled.

The Event Horizon was a dark blur as the Lewis and Clark' shot past it, with no features instantly visible. Wendy found herself trying to pick details out, but having no luck.

They came around again, cautiously matching velocity, creeping up slowly.

No one spoke. The proximity warning continued to beep.

The Event Horizon could easily have swallowed the Lewis and Clark, taken it in without anyone noticing it. Dipper and his team had created something that was more Gothic monstrosity than spacecraft, a thing of arching girders and strange angles, of darkness and depth that the naked eye and unaided mind could not estimate. The clouds had swirled away around the starship, leaving it at the eye of the storm, but this did not aid in perception.

Wendy stared into this darkness and felt cold. She had never felt cold in space very often. She let her chair down, unbuckled, stepped onto the deck so that she could go forward.

"There she is," Dipper said, pride in his voice. Daddy's little girl is out there, Wendy thought.

Robbie shook his head, his expression unreadable to Wendy. "Can we go home now, please?"

Mabel had gotten herself into a position to see the Event Horizon. She stared for a few moments, his mouth working. Finally, she said, "Whoa. . . . . It's HUGE! Dipper, it's incredible!" Wendy raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic announcement.

"Thank you, Mabel," Dipper said. His voice held an strong sense of pride as a small smile came to his face. Wendy was not sure that she liked his tone, but she understood it.

Wendy stepped forward, leaning over Robbie like a dark spectral presence. She had had enough of that damned proximity alarm now. She reached down and punched the defeat switch, silencing it.

"Range five hundred meters and holding," Robbie said, coming back to business abruptly, a sign of respect for Wendy looming over his shoulder.

"Turbulence is dropping off."

Tambry fingers were dancing over her board. "Picking up magnetic interference. It's playing hell with the IMUs."

"Switch over to the trackers," Wendy said. Tambry's fingers flew again, and readouts changed. Wendy turned to look at Robbie. "Robbie, you up for a flyby?"

"Love to," Robbie said, using his least convincing tone of voice.

His hands moved over the controls. The Lewis and Clark eased into motion, nudged along by gentle taps of the thrusters. Wendy could feel the bursts through her fingers, through her feet, could feel the pulse of the ship and know when there was something wrong.

They came up under the Event Horizon, looking into the belly of the beast.

Seeing this craft was providing Wendy with a different perspective on Dipper Pines. She suspected that someone had had the idea to make the ship large and comfortable, a workplace, for interstellar crews who might spend a great deal of time researching newly discovered worlds.

To Wendy's eyes, the Event Horizon was a dark Industrial Revolution monstrosity, wrought from iron and powered by coal, a foul juggernaut tearing the heavens apart and polluting the remnants with its effluvium. This was not a ship that was easy to knock down.

Robbie concentrated on his controls, using the displays where needed, refusing to look at the ship they were passing.

"Look at the size of that thing," Mabel muttered.

Dipper moved forward, leaning over Robbie and Tambry, ignoring Robbie's warning glare. "Can we move in closer?"

"Any closer and we're gonna need a rubber," Robbie growled.

Wendy's eyes narrowed. It was time to face the beast. They had a job to do here. "Do it," she said.

Robbie frowned angrily. His hands floated over the controls.

Another course change, a bit more abrupt than required. The Lewis and Clark drifted in towards the Event Horizon, falling into shadow. Wendy felt the cold creep into her again, and she wondered what they were getting themselves into here.

Something spherical loomed within the shadows, in the heart of the starship. An arm jutted from the sphere, covered in small pods, dishes and antenna elements.

Dipper leaned forward, focusing, pointing. "There's the main airlock. We can dock there."

Wendy pulled her attention away from the spherical structure and turned to Robbie. "Robbie, use the arm and lock us onto that antenna cluster."

Robbie nodded. He flicked controls, switching his monitors over to a view from the main camera on the Lewis and Clark's boom arm. Cautiously, he nudged the salvage ship in toward the airlock, killing excess velocity with little blips on the thrusters.

Slipping his right hand into a waldo glove, Robbie extended the boom towards the Event Horizon. Wendy watched over Robbie's shoulder, intent on the pilot's work. Dipper, in the meantime, was watching out of the main windows, trying to pick out the details.

Floating the arm by the antenna cluster, Robbie spread his fingers in the glove. The end of Robbie's boom spread open like a flower, the mechanical hand spreading wide. Carefully, Robbie floated the hand in towards his target, touched it.

His hand closed in the glove. On the monitor, the mechanical fingers closed around the main part of the antenna cluster, buckling it.  
"Be careful, would you?", Dipper said, turning to Robbie. "It's not a load-bearing structure."

Robbie slipped his hand from the waldo glove and looked up at Dipper, his expression dismissive. "It is now." He turned to Wendy, the attitude vanishing. "Locked in, Red."

Wendy nodded, turned her head. "Tambry, give me a read."

Tambry's displays lit, flashed with data, stopping and starting at Tambry's tapped-in commands. Wendy liked it a lot when her crew was efficient and smart.

"The reactor's still hot," Tambry said, looking over her screens. "We've got several small radiation sources, leaks, probably. Nothing serious."

Wendy tried to make sense of the displays herself, but the angle was wrong and all she got was a strained neck muscle. "Do they have pressure?"

Tambry nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The hull's intact, but there's no gravity and the thermal units are offline. I'm showing deep cold. The crew couldn't survive unless they were in stasis."

Even then, the odds are lousy, Wendy thought. She smoothed at her hair, refusing to jump to conclusions until all the evidence was in. "Find 'em, Tambry."

"Already on it," Tambry said, her fingers moving over her console.

"Bio-scan is online." She was silent for a few moments, looking over her displays, mentally organizing the data. Wendy expected her to come up with an answer any moment now. Instead, she frowned, uncertain. "Something's wrong with the scan."

Wendy leaned further down, trying to take a closer look.

Dipper was hanging back, trying once again to stay out of the way. "Radiation interference?" Wendy said.

Tambry shook her head and bit her lip as she looked over the displays, calling up different readouts. "There's not enough to throw it off. I'm picking up trace life forms, but I can't get a lock on the location."

Wendy looked around as Dipper took a step toward them. "Could it be the crew? If they were in suspended animation, wouldn't that affect the scan?"

"I'd still get a location," Tambry said, turning away from the frustration of her displays, "but these readings, they're all over the ship. It doesn't make any sense."

Wendy straightened up, squaring her shoulders. "Okay, we do it the hard way." She looked from Tambry to Dipper, back to Tambry again. "Deck by deck, room by room. Tambry, deploy the umbilicus." Wendy turned around, found her next target down at the engineering console. "I believe you're up for a walk, Miss Pines. Go get your bonnet on."

Mabel displayed an unseemly level of enthusiasm for this suggestion, snapping back with a crisp, "Yes, ma'am!" before leaving her station and heading for the hatch.

Dipper started to follow his sister off the bridge, hurrying to keep up with her.

"Doctor," Wendy said, firmly. Dipper stopped and turned, giving Wendy an impatient look. "Stay here on the bridge. Once the ship—"

"Captain," Dipper interrupted, coming closer to Wendy, his face set and his attitude filled with a desire for argument, "I didn't come out here to sit on your bridge. I need to be on my ship."

Wendy took a deep breath, trying to squeeze the tension from muscles that had no desire to be untensed. "Once the ship is secured, we'll bring you on board—"

Sharply, Dipper said, "That's unacceptable."

Wendy hissed in frustration. "Once we've secured the ship," she said, and now her temper was certainly fraying, "that's the way it is!"

Dipper glared at her in abject silence. Wendy let him have a few breaths to get used to the idea of defeat, then added, "I need you to guide us from the comm station. This is where I need you. Help us to do our job."

Dipper breathed out, relaxing. Wendy felt relieved. While she expected Dipper to be aboard the Event Horizon sooner or later, she much preferred it to be later. The last thing they needed was for the main designer of the ship to be stomping around, getting in the way and giving orders no one could follow.

"Fine," Dipper said, and he went to sit down.

Wendy headed for the hatch.


	5. Chapter 5

Down in the airlock bay, Wendy watched the monitors while Tambry deployed the umbilicus, carefully extending the heavy plastic tube from the Lewis and Clark to the Event Horizon, locking the docking collar in place over the outer door. At least Dipper and his team had done something that followed standard protocols. Wendy's crew could have managed without using the umbilicus, but their lives would have been far more complicated.

Wendy turned away from the monitors as Lee, behind her, said, "Come on, Red, I already put my shoes on." It was a bit more than his shoes, Wendy noted. Lee was ready to hit space at a moment's notice—all he needed to do was get his helmet in place.

Wendy was already fully rigged for EVA, as were Soos and Mabel, the bulky suits making it a little difficult for them to move in the airlock bay.

Lee dropped Wendy's helmet into place, sealing it securely. Lee seemed to have an almost infinite capacity for extra-vehicular activity. A liking for EVA was a rare thing even in the Big Rock Range, where being outside was a daily occurrence.

"You've had plenty EVA, Lee," Wendy said, het voice muffled by the helmet. "It's Mabel's turn. Stay on station. If anything happens…"

Lee was all serious business. "I'll be all over it."

Nate finished checking over Soos and Mabel for problems with their suits.

He walked over to Wendy, checking seams and connectors, confirming the helmet seal.

"Any survivors are gonna be hot," Wendy said to Nate.

He nodded. "Radiation I can handle." He finished his check of Wendy's suit and stepped back. "It's the dead ones I can't fix."

That's all we're probably bringing back for you, Wendy thought, turning away from Nate and nodding to Soos.

"Opening inner airlock door," Soos said, doubly muffled through two layers of helmet. He turned and tapped the control panel in the airlock door.

There was a resounding clank as the main lock disengaged, allowing the door to slide open.

Wendy stepped into the airlock, followed closely by Mabel and Soos.

Mabel turned as she entered the airlock, pulling out the end of a safety line and attaching it to an eyebolt on her suit. Lee had followed them, still making visual safety checks—one of the reasons Wendy respected the man, despite the smart-ass approach to life—and smiled now at seeing Mabel setting up a safety line.

"You still need the rope?" Lee said to Mabel, even as he reached out to check the integrity of the line and its connection to the eyebolt. "I thought you were one of those spacemen with ice in your veins."

Mabel tugged on the rope, getting an approving nod from Lee. "I'd rather be on the rope and not need it," she said, as she tensed the line a little more, "than need it and not have it. Now step aside, old man."

Lee made a face at this. In a serious voice, Lee said, "You just keep your nose clean. Baby Bear. Clear the door."

With a wave, Lee backed out of the airlock. The door rolled shut, the locks engaging with a hollow boom that resonated through the ship. Warning lights flicked on. Through her helmet, Wendy could hear the low hissing of air being evacuated from the airlock.

She pressed back against the airlock wall, waiting. The seconds ticked away.

Silence around them. The cotton-wool feeling of vacuum, shot through with the sounds of the suit systems, electronics, and electrics warming and cooling, air aspirating through the suit ventilators, odd creaking sounds from the material.

The outer airlock door opened. Light poured in from the umbilicus.

Wendy turned and stepped out, launching herself.

Tambry had indicated that Dipper should follow her down into the lower level of the bridge area. He saw no reason to object to this slight change of environment, so he did as she requested.

Waving him to the seat usually occupied by the Mabel, Tambry sat down and started activating monitors and consoles around them. Dipper turned his head, taking in the different displays. Three of them were direct video feeds.

Time code, and names had been overlaid in the lower right corner; the monitor for Wendy's video feed was directly in front of Dipper.

At the moment, the feeds showed only the featureless interior of the umbilicus. Once in a while a figure would drift into range.

Next to Dipper, Tambry said, "Video feed is clear."

Robbie climbed down behind them, his eyes on the monitors.

"Are you with us, Dr. Pines?" Wendy, made tinny and distant by the radio system.

Something looming up on the monitors now. Dipper was beginning to react with excitement as Wendy, Mabel, and Soos closed on the Event Horizon. He should have been with them, but he could not win every battle. Perhaps it was to the good—let the professionals face any initial danger, and then go in to open up all the secrets hidden within the ship.

Dipper focused intently on the monitors now. "I'm with you," he said. "You've reached the outer airlock door."

Wendy did not waste time with the Event Horizon's outer airlock door, motioning for Mabel to get it open in a hurry. She quickly complied.

Soos pushed by her, then, getting a thumper up against the inner airlock door. The device emitted bursts of sound, measuring the return response.

Soos scanned over the readouts. "We've got pressure," he said, putting the thumper away on his belt.

"Clear and open," Wendy said. She and Soos got out of Mabel's way.

Mabel floated up to the inner airlock door, turning herself carefully. She reached to het utility belt, extracting a slim tool, inserting this into the airlock operations panel. The inner airlock door opened slightly. Particles swirled through the gap— crystals of ice, frozen dust, more that they would have needed additional equipment to identify. Atmosphere from the Event Horizon would fill the umbilicus, helping to keep it stable as long as the docking ring seal remained intact.

Mabel continued working. The inner airlock door opened all the way, a doorway into pitch darkness.

Mabel stowed her tool and checked his line as Wendy led the way into the Event Horizon. Their helmet lights caught ice crystals whirling in the silent darkness, and light scattered around them, only to be swallowed in the darkness.

Wendy glanced around, trying to get some sort of perspective. As far as she could tell, they had stepped into some kind of access corridor, but the corridor was seemingly endless, an immense pool of darkness broken once,in a while by a deep blue patch of light that he assumed resulted from windows filtering the light from Neptune.

She looked up. Somewhere far over her head, her helmet light reflected from a ceiling. She could have used a hundred times the candlepower, she realized.

The lights they had with them would show them almost nothing.

"Geez," Soos said as Wendy looked around. "It's huge."

Trying to wrench her mind away from the scale of the starship, Wendy said, "Ice crystals everywhere. This place is a deep freeze." That was more for Dipper's benefit than anyone else's.

Dipper's voice was in Wendy's head now, courtesy of the suit radio. "You're in the central corridor. It connects the personnel areas to engineering."

Wendy was about to suggest they pick a direction when her attention was taken by something hovering just at the edge of her field of vision. "Hold on a second," she said, quietly and firmly. She started to crane her head forward, around. "Everybody hold your position."

Mabel and Soos froze where they were. "What is it?" Mabel said.

"I don't know," Wendy said, edging around, trying not to move too fast.

Small objects afloat in microgravity tended to prove all three of Newton's laws of motion. One too-quick move here and they would be chasing this particular mystery down the length of the corridor.

Wendy edged down, closer, focusing on the object. It was small and white.

A human tooth, complete with the root.

Shocked, Wendy said, "Nate?"

Nate was normally unflappable, but his voice was shaky now. "I, uh, think it's a right, rear molar."

Wendy rolled her eyes. Time for the pragmatic voice. "Yeah, thanks, I can see it's a tooth." Yes, Nate, she thought, this is not what we were looking for here.

"Looks like it was pulled out by the root," Nate added helpfully. This was not the sort of statement Wendy wanted to have made dead-center in her head. As it was, Wendy's spine was chilling.

This was not getting off to a good start.

"Come on," Robbie said, looking away from the monitors. "What is that all about?"

Dipper and Tambry were both staring at the bizarre image on the monitor displaying Wendy's video feed. The tooth floated there lazily in midair, flecked with frozen blood and little bits of flesh.

Dipper felt as though he had entered a timeless place, one where the shadows lengthened and the light twisted all the images. His dreams came back to him, haunting. Whatever had happened to the Event Horizon seven years ago, it was beginning to seem that the end result was catastrophic and Lee had arrived at the flight deck now, nudging Robbie aside as he leaned between Tambry and Dipper to stare at the monitors. "This is some weird voodoo shit!" the rescue tech exclaimed, shaking his head. Dipper looked at Lee, then turned back to the monitor, wondering what sort of answer he could have given him.  
Tambry gave Lee an annoyed glance. "Get back to your post, Lee."

Dipper wondered whether it mattered if Lee spent his time here on the bridge or down in the airlock bay playing doorman. Lee did not stick around to debate the point, leaving the bridge after a curt nod to Tambry.

The image on Wendy's monitor shifted.

Wendy stood up straight, stretching her arms out, the motion sending the vagrant tooth spinning away down the corridor. This mission was beginning to give her the creeps, and that was just not acceptable.

"All right, all right," she said, pushing her feelings aside and trying to regain her professional demeanor, "let's move on. Soos and I will search the forward decks." She turned to look at Mabel, who was trying to follow the progress of the flying tooth. "Mabel, take engineering. Don't forget to breathe."

Mabel turned her head. Wendy could just about see her smiling through the faceplate. "I won't, ma'am."

Wendy and Soos started cautiously down the corridor. If Wendy had her bearings right, they would eventually arrive at the bridge. In contrast, Mabel tackled the travel issue by kicking off-hard, aiming for a wall, turning over in midflight, and kicking off from there to increase her momentum. She vanished down the corridor, trailing line.

Wendy shook her head, smiling. Mabel was good, but she was impetuous.

She passed through an archway, surprised at the suggestion of Gothic design here. It took Wendy a moment to realize that the archway disguised a join in the corridor—sections of the main corridor had been joined together this way, rather than simply being welded or bolted. She stopped and turned carefully, inspecting the coupling.

Near the floor, a box caught her attention. There was an explosives symbol on the cover.

"Dr. Pines," Wendy said, slowly, "what's this?"

Before Dipper could answer, Soos said, "Here's another one." He was at another coupling, hovering over another of the boxes. He pointed towards the other side of the corridor. "They're all over the place."

Looking around, Wendy could pick out those within range of her helmet light. They nestled into the couplings at floor or ceiling level, looking for all the world like mechanical molluscs.

"They're explosive charges," Dipper said, finally.

Wendy sighed, shaking her head. "I can see that. What are they for?"

"In an emergency, they destroy the central corridor and separate the personnel areas from engineering. The crew could use the foredecks as a lifeboat."

This made sense to Wendy, though she had some difficulty seeing it from an aesthetic point of view—all this immensity, this grandeur, and the panic button led to a collection of explosives out in the open. The Event Horizon had been the prototype. Not everything gets covered up in a prototype.

Wendy joined Soos and they began moving down the corridor again. "That means they didn't abandon ship," Soos said.

Wendy was looking around again, trying to figure out what was really wrong here. "So where are they?" she asked.

No answers were forthcoming.


	6. Chapter 6

Dipper scanned the monitors with an almost boyish enthusiasm, concentrating mainly on the feeds from Wendy and Soos—right now, Mabel's progress was more dizzying than informative.

Wendy and Soos had reached the Event Horizon's Gravity Couch Bay. This would be one of the places they would find any crew members in suspended animation. Against all reason, Dipper held out hope that they would find someone alive.

Soos said, "We found the Gravity Couches." The radio link made his voice tinny.

There were eighteen Couches in the bay, nine on each of the two walls, all essentially the same in form, size, and function as those on the Lewis and Clark. The bay itself was considerably larger, of course, but everything aboard the Event Horizon was designed to be on the large side.

"Any crew?" Dipper asked, as Soos and Wendy each walked along a row of Gravity Couches.

"Negative," Wendy said.

Dipper sat back, drained, empty. It was hopeless, then. No one left alive, no easy route to the answers. They had to know. There must be something aboard the ship….

The video monitor showed nothing but one empty Gravity Couch after another.

They gave no sign of having been used. Dipper shook his head, trying to will something into being there.

"They're empty, Dr. Pines," Wendy said.

Dipper's fists clenched. Hopeless. Everything he had done ended up in a condition of hopelessness. He looked up, looked into the darkness of the Event Horizon and tried to think of something, but he could not get the focus now, could not bring anything back to mind.

"Tambry," Wendy continued, "any luck with that scan?"

Tambry's hands were playing over the console in front of her. Dipper turned his head to look at her and saw frustration written in lines and knots in her face.

"I'm running diagnostics now, Captain." She shook her head again, glaring at the readouts. "Nothing's wrong with the sensor pack. I'm still getting trace life readings all over the ship."

That should have been impossible, Dipper reflected. Wendy knew that too, going by the tinny sigh over the radio link.

A change in the frantic movement on Mabel's monitor drew Dipper's attention away from Tambry's predicament. Mabel had given up her fastball flying technique now, in favor of more considered movement. As Dipper watched, the image from Mabel's camera stabilized and focused. Dipper smiled, though it was an empty smile. Mabel was about to encounter one of the truths of the Event Horizon.

Mabel stood before an immense dark door, perhaps the biggest pressure door she had ever seen in her life. Despite herself, she was extremely impressed. As it was, it was big. Goddamned big. Huge, in fact.

Cheerfully, she said, "It looks like I've reached the First Containment door."

"The engineering decks are on the other side," Dipper answered. Mabel felt a flash a slight flash of annoyance at her brother. Dipper might be one of the most brilliant minds ever to juggle an equation, but he was really condescending when he felt like it.

Mabel did not bother to acknowledge Dipper's statement. She reached out and touched the access panel at her right hand side. The door opened with ponderous grace.

Mabel was delighted to see yet more mystery revealed behind this First Containment door. She moved forward to see more clearly, and to give her camera a better chance to pick up what she was seeing. She was looking into a long corridor section, tube-shaped. The engineers who had built the ship had, for some arcane reason, set this section of corridor to spinning like a turbine, a shell outside the access tube whirling at dizzying speed. From Mabel's vantage point, it looked as though alternating sections were spinning in different directions. There was surprisingly little noise, but she figured most of it operated in vacuum to cut down on friction.

Her head spun as she tried to focus on this weird assembly. Finally, she looked away, trying to get her bearings back. "Cool," she said. "What's all this do?"

Dipper said, "It allows you to enter the Second Containment without compromising the magnetic fields."

Okay, so you're into big showy rigs. Mabel suspected that the same result could have been achieved with half the equipment and a quarter of the power, but she wasn't the one who had the brain the size of Betelgeuse.

"Looks like a ginormous meatgrinder," she said, and stepped forward, her breath echoing in her helmet.

"Dr. Pines, what's this door?" Soos asked.

He had continued all the way down the main corridor until the corridor had ended in a pressure door. He played his helmet light over it, over the walls and floor nearby. Nothing to be seen.

"You're at the bridge, Mr. Soos," Dipper said over the radio link.

He took a deep breath and started to reach for the door controls.

Wendy passed through a hatchway into what appeared to be some kind of medical facility, either the operating theater or some kind of surgical lab.

All of the tables were empty, reflecting het helmet light, and as she turned her head she caught glimpses of surgical instruments and equipment floating aimlessly in the microgravity.

"I'm in Medical," she said, ducking out of the way of a wandering forceps.

She continued her exploration, moving cautiously through the room, inspecting everything. "No casualties. It looks like this place hasn't been used."

Secured drug lockers, empty biohazard and sharps containers, just an ugly assortment of floating hardware to contend with. Wendy's skin was crawling with cold. She was beginning to think Robbie was right, that they should not have come here.

Over the radio link, Dipper said, "You still haven't seen any crew?"

"If we saw any crew, Doctor, you'd know about it." She turned her head, looked down at the floor, looking for clues and coming up with nothing. Under her breath she muttered, "This place is a tomb."

She took a step forward.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"Fuck!" Wendy yelled, whirling, her hands coming up, ready to strike out.

An empty glove drifted past her faceplate, tumbling slowly. She stared at it as it floated away. Her heart was thundering in het chest and her breathing was roaring in her ears.

"Wendy?" Tambry was demanding over the radio link. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, the words coming as a reflex. She slowed her breathing, tried to get her heart to slow down to a more normal rate. She could feel the clamminess of sweat on her skin, cooled by the air circulating through her suit.

"Your pulse is elevated," Nate said over the radio link. "Are you sure you're—"

"I'm fine," Wendy snapped, which put a stop to any further questions from Nate.

She turned, pushing the fright to the back of her mind. Only inanimate objects, nothing more. Finding a computer console, she set to work. She had had enough of fishing around in the dark. They needed light, air, warmth.

She settled in to start hacking into the ship's systems.

Dipper hunched over in his seat, his hands clenched into fists. He stared at the monitors, but nothing new was revealed.

"Where are they?" he whispered.

Tambry turned to him, her face set. "If anyone's there to be saved, Wendy's going to save them. No one's got more hands-on experience in this. She's one of the few captains who've ever worked the Outer Reach."

That got Dipper's attention for the moment. "She's been past Mars?"

Tambry turned her head, checking displays. "Yep. She served on the Goliath."

Dipper shuffled information in his mind. "The Goliath? Wasn't that ship destroyed in a fire?"

"They were trying to rescue a supply shuttle bound for Titan," Tambry said, slowly. "The freighter's tanks ruptured, flooded both ships with pure oxygen."

That was one of the great spacer nightmares: a ship filled with oxygen was a deathtrap about to happen. "Wendy and three others barely made it to a lifeboat. If not for Wendy, no one would have made it."

Dipper gazed at her, thoughtful. Wendy was strong, then, resourceful. That was good.

Wasn't it?

Soos had managed to open the hatch to the bridge. Taking a deep breath, he eased inside, glancing quickly around.

"Okay," he said, "I'm on the bridge."

He moved slowly around, finding a briefing table and several chairs. This was an antechamber to the bridge, a small briefing room that the crew would have used for mission discussions and assignments. He looked over the table and chairs but found no indication that they had ever been used.

There was a brilliant flash of lightning, storm activity going on in the atmosphere of the planet beneath them. He started to look up, but the flash had thrown off his night vision for a few moments.

He turned to move deeper into the bridge, leaving behind, high up on a wall, unnoticed, a frozen mass of blood and tissue that had once been a living human being.

Wendy worked at the science station for a couple of minutes, and was suddenly rewarded by displays lighting up. She smiled to herself. Something was finally going the way she wanted it. This was something she could deal with.

Pausing for a moment, she said, "The science workstation has power. I'll see if I can find the crew from here."

She got back to work.

"We're not going to find anyone," Robbie said to Tambry, his face an angry mask. "This place is dead."

Dipper ignored him, ignored Wendy's monitor and focused on his sister's continuing walk into engineering.

Suddenly, he said "Mr. Soos," Dipper said softly, "turn back and to your left, please."

He watched as Soos's camera view moved, bringing something new into view.

Tambry leaned over, peering at the monitor, then at Dipper. "What is it?"

"Ship's log," Dipper said.

"I see it," Soos said, and the view on his monitor shifted again.

Soos stepped toward the log unit. It was really nothing more than a small videodisc unit built into one of the consoles, but it was enough to keep a running record of bridge and ship activities.

He reached down and pressed the eject tab. Nothing happened. He leaned down, checked that it was receiving power. A small green light was glowing in one corner of the operations panel. He tried the eject button again, without success.

"It's stuck," he said.

He reached down to his utility belt, extracting a small probe. Carefully, he slipped the probe into the video unit, feeling around until he was sure he had the eject mechanism. He pressed down, pulled back, felt something give.

A tiny laserdisc emerged halfway from the unit, jamming there. Soos grasped it carefully and pulled, but the disc would not move any further. He tugged again, frustrating himself in the effort.

"It's really jammed in there, dude!" he said.

He sighed, then growled softly. They needed that disc, needed it badly. It might well answer a lot of the questions about the fate of the crew. It might even answer some of the questions about the disappearance of the Event Horizon. All things considered, he would be glad to see Dipper's mind put at ease.

He tried the probe again, trying to pull the laserdisc away from whatever part of the mechanism was jamming it in place. This did not seem to help. Once again he grasped the disc and pulled, was frustrated, tugged harder, thought he had it this time, but didn't.

All the air rushing out of him in one explosive gasp, he put all of his strength into getting the disc loose. This time it came free, sending him spinning and tumbling in the microgravity.

He flung an arm out, trying to stabilize himself long enough to get back to a position where he might be able to stop his motion. His heart leapt into his mouth as his helmet lights flashed on something floating in the bridge with him.

He turned helplessly, only to find himself being struck by something with considerable mass. Holding on to the laserdisc with his right hand, he reached out with his left, grasping cloth and, beneath that, something hard.

A face came into view, lit brightly by his helmet lamps. A man's face, contorted, mouth open, swollen tongue protruding. The veins stood out, bloated and frozen, all over his face and neck.

He stared for a moment, his breath catching in his throat. He pushed away from the body, rebounded from a wall, managed to bounce himself down to the deck, catching hold of the edge of a console to stop himself from moving any further.

His tone utterly professional, he said, "I found one." His heart was pounding, but it did not feel as though he was in any danger of his control slipping. Good enough.

Over the radio link, Wendy said, "Alive?"

"Corpsicle," he said.

He lifted his head, aiming his lights up at the floating corpse. Anchoring himself against one of the console units, he reached up, snagging the corpse by a foot, pulling it down.

Dipper sat back now, regarding the face of the dead man on Soos's monitor.

Whoever he was, he was a mess, and they'd be lucky to identify him easily.

Nate came into the bridge, joining Dipper and Tambry at the monitors.

"What happened to his eyes?" Robbie said, staring at the screen.

"Explosive decompression," Tambry said.

Nate shook his head. "Decompression wouldn't do that."

Dipper had to agree there. The dead man's eyes had been gouged out, going by the images.

That would have to wait for the time being. Mabel had finished her long walk.


End file.
